So… (Various Updates and Announcements)

May update

Hey, what's good. This is Rich, and you're listening to Paychecks and Balances where it's all about navigating your finances and career, so you can achieve the freedom you want. And if you're new to the podcast, this is more of an update episode. If you haven't listened to P and B before. Four, I encourage you to go back and listen to whatever was before this one or whatever was before that one and so on.

And if you've been around for a minute, I've got some exciting updates and there's a reason that I've been quiet over the past few weeks. And I wanted to talk a little bit more about that today. And I also just wanted to talk a little bit more about what's been going on over the past few weeks because I've been as stressed as I could possibly be because, I'd had someone reach out at work about giving a talk to one of our black employee groups about mental wealth.

And for me, I didn't just want to give a presentation with a bunch of slides in terms of a therapist, in terms of having a life coach, supportive friends, mastermind groups, there are a lot of things that have positioned me to be where I am today. And. There was something about this talk in the level of vulnerability that it was going to require, given that I never told my story in this level of detail before.

And I found that once I actually started to talk after not sleeping the night before and after actually having a panic attack in the past couple of weeks and being so stressed that I could really get nothing else done. Finally, the talk was upon me and once I got going, it was actually pretty hard to stop talking.

And I don't know if you've ever given a talk like this, but after this talk and after I turned the camera off, I was jumping up and down, tears streaming down my face. And at first I thought it was just the relief of having completed this talk, but then I realized that it was actually a personal breakthrough.

And when I say a personal breakthrough, yes, I've conquered the alcohol part, but I had not conquered being able to own and tell my story until I gave this talk this past week. And so while that might've slowed me down in terms of podcast production, and just a lot of other stuff, it was a huge step forward for me personally.

And what I'm calling this. Ball season of my life or this bull market of my life. And that has opened the doors now to a lot of other possibilities and a lot of other things that I can do now that I'm comfortable telling them that story. And now that I'm comfortable just owning fully some of the things that I've been through and being vulnerable and comfortable enough, sharing that with the world, because I know.

That there are a lot of people that have struggled with the same things. So all that said the talk is finally behind me and I can get back to focusing on the podcast. And I haven't just been quiet simply because of the talk. I've also been quiet because there's been a lot going on behind the scenes. As far as P and B goes.

And the biggest thing related to this show is that starting in June, I'm going to be coming back on a weekly release schedule. So since September of this past year I've been publishing bi-weekly because I had so much going on, it was just me. I wanted to get a sense of what life would be like and what it would be like to get this to where I ultimately wanted to go.

And I also had this struggle with commitment where every time I thought about recording this episode, where I was going to make some of these announcements, I realized that I was also making a commitment and that was a bit scary in itself. And I'm finally at a place where I can confidently and comfortably do that.

And I'm also just excited. Generally, I'm just really excited about a lot of what's to come with the podcast, especially going back to a weekly schedule. I've been recording with guests behind the scenes. I've been reaching out to folks getting new people scheduled. I've been working on additional solo episodes for myself.

So that's going to be coming up as well. And then also with this new season of the podcast, I'm moving the release day from Tuesday to Thursday. I've been releasing podcasts on Tuesday since 2013. And just given that I feel. And just given that it feels like I'm entering a new season. I want to switch things up even more and there's even more switching up than we're about to talk about in a second.

So when I come back on a weekly schedule in June, it's also going to be released days are now on Thursday. So one to give you that update, that is super exciting. It's going to be a lot more work, but I'm also being a lot smarter about how I get it done. The other great news is that the business is generating enough money for me to consistently pay a team, which has been pretty awesome.

I know that I set a goal at the beginning of the year of 60 K in side hustle revenue. And I can confidently say, I'm going to blow well past that. And I was able to hire a second virtual assistant to help me out on the podcast. My first virtual assistant is owning everything as it relates to the blog, which I'm going to talk about in a minute.

And, I also hired three freelance writers, so it was really important to me that I got the blog back up and running and that I also got back to writing myself. So if you don't know, I actually started as a writer, pretty much from 2008 to 2013, I freelanced I ran another. I ran multiple blogs and websites.

And I want to kind of go back to my writing roots a little bit. So I'm also going to be writing at least one piece or article per month. And I have one that's up on the website. Now that talks a little bit about my journey and there are also a couple of pieces that are live from the new writer. So I encourage you to drop by paychecks and balances.com and check that out.

And you should also drop by the website because it's been redesigned. It's fresh. New, thanks to the help of the team it's been revamped. So I encourage you to drop by check out the new layout, check out the articles from the writers. And there is going to be a new article going up weekly from one of the writers or myself, if not both.

And then there's going to be other content that we're going to be sharing on the blog as well. To keep you in the know about what's happening professionally, financially, so you can achieve the freedom you want. Now I'm almost toward the end here. I have another update and that is that the P the YouTube channel will be up and running soon.

So you've heard me talk about the YouTube channel that I created specifically for podcasting. That is still very much going, but I'm probably going to be scaling back the frequency, or I will be scaling back the frequency at which. I'll be releasing content over there, but for paychecks and balances, I've had a lot of ideas for a number of years now.

And I finally have the space and I'd even say the assertiveness and the confidence to finally pursue some of those things. So in the next few weeks, there's going to be more characters populating on the YouTube channel, and that's going to be something that I'm going to be looking forward to updating on a regular basis, just given how many ideas and even how many conversations I want to have.

I also have an idea for a new show. That I'm not going to talk about yet, but, there's a lot in the hopper and I hope that you're right excited as I am about this, because it feels like I'm finally fully entering the season where I have the space in all the tools and everything. I need to build paychecks and balances into what I want it to be.

In service of you. And so one thing that will never change, even though some of the topics might change, because we're going to talk more about building wealth and things like crypto. I have a couple of dope guests who were coming up on that...the intersection of work and money. There are a lot of things that I've already recorded that I'm super excited about.

And I think that are really gonna reflect where I want this thing to go going forward. And also the type of information that I want to make sure that you're continuing to receive and that it stays. Simple accessible and easy to understand. And of course I want to make sure that we're still having some fun along the way.

So that's pretty much it for me on this update episode. I think I'm just going to call this a bonus episode. So I'll be back the first Thursday in June for a new season of the podcast, a new era of the podcast and paychecks and bounces overall. And if you've been around for a while, I just want to say thank you so much for supporting and listening to this point.

I know that there were some things that if you've been around for a while and depending where you are, that went on earlier this year, that created a lot of turbulence. And if you're still here today through that, I thank you and appreciate you so very much. And if you're new, I hope you'll continue to stick around, check out the new season of the podcast.

Again, like I said, I got a lot of exciting stuff coming up and so until next time, Be safe. I'm out. Peace.